Update July 9, 2014 :
I got another card and ran it through the same h2testw. This time I got 36.4 MB/s write, 43.4 MB/s read. Slightly faster than the earlier sample. Color is different - the yellow in the Amazon photo is actually gold, so it's not quite as hideous as I first feared. Not that it really matters - we don't buy memory cards for looks. My original purchase from May 15, 2012 has performed flawlessly in my 5D III all this time. This new card is for a 70D.
Packaging is still the same, and it still says "X46" at the back. And comes with a year's subscription of RescuePRO deluxe (serial number on slip of paper).
End of update.
Quick summary of Sandisk premium SD cards : SanDisk has 3 right now. SanDisk Ultra is their lowest line (max. 30 MB/s). Extreme, this one, is in the middle, at 45 MB/s. Extreme Pro is rated at 95 MB/s. All cards in their premium line comes with a lifetime warranty. This one also comes with a 1 year subscription to RescuePRO (serial number included on a slip of paper in the box).
This card is a little more expensive compared to other reputable and fast cards. The Extreme Pro is roughly twice the price of this. You're paying partly for the SanDisk reputation, and partly for the speed.
I tested my card with the
Transcend USB 3.0 Super Speed Multi-Card Reader for SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/CF Cards (TS-RDF8)
connected to a USB 3.0 PCIe card (NEC chipset) on an i7-920, using h2testw 1.4. Essentially I'm testing large sequential reads and writes. As expected, there were no errors. Card was formatted as FAT32 out of the box.
I'm not sure if my Transcend reader supports UHS-I mode, which may explain my inability to reach 45 MB/s. I did get a respectable 34.8 MB/s write speed, and a 40.7 MB/s read speed. I also tested it with my USB 2.0 reader, and only managed a 19.5 MB/s read speed. The take-away from this is that you need either a USB 3.0 reader or a Firewire 800 reader to take full advantage of the speed when transferring photos / videos to your computer. At twice the transfer speed, you're looking at a saving of about 14 minutes (27 minutes compared to 13 minutes) for a full 32GB of data.
There's no issues using this on my camcorder or DSLR. My camcorder works just fine with Class 4 cards, so it is not surprise there's no issues with this card. I could record all I frame videos with my Canon 5D III (the 5D III does not support UHS-I). I'll test the write speed in burst mode (RAW files) compared to a generic Class 10 and update this review later.
One strange thing about this card (made in China, in case anyone's wondering) is that there's a sticker over the UPC stating this is the X46 package (meant for Asia excluding Japan, Europe, Australia). Peel that away and it says "A21" (Americas). I don't believe there's any actual difference in the card itself.
| RAM | 32 GB |
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